Hybrid Work and the CIO's Role in Enterprise Transformation

Enterprises have undergone historic changes over the past two years, not the least of which is the shift toward the hybrid work environment. Although the transition to remote working was unplanned, it proved successful in most cases, and in some cases, profitable. 

Employees have demonstrated increased levels of productivity, greater job satisfaction, and the ability to collaborate effectively leveraging a wide variety of cloud-based solutions. Today, 74% of U.S. companies are using or plan to implement a permanent hybrid work model – and 44% of U.S. employees prefer it. 

But hybrid isn’t without its challenges, and ensuring success requires significant transformation in the enterprise at multiple levels. Cultural change is equally important as implementing the technology infrastructure to enable secure, continuous access to company resources from remote locations. 

Recently, Keith Ferrazzi, founder and chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight, led two intimate roundtable discussions with CIOs from industry-leading organizations, including Nutanix, CVS Health, FedEx, Lumen, Abbott, Liberty Mutual, Verizon and others to understand how the CIO can be a champion of transformation and help to ensure the success of the hybrid work model. This article looks at highlights from the discussions.

The Challenges of Driving Alignment Around Digital Initiatives

According to Roshan Navagamuwa, CIO of CVS Health, it’s not just COVID that accelerated digital transformation initiatives in organizations across industries, but the rising-tide phenomenon of the digital consumer. “Consumers were already compelling us to change from traditional experiences,” he said. “They were expecting us to make it just as easy to engage with CVS Health, as was already the case in other parts of their lives.”

However, Sabina Ewing, CIO and vice president of business and technology services at Abbott, said COVID was the “digital defibrillator.” “It accelerated digital transformation and pushed organizations to build technical acumen,” she said.

Still, implementing technology to support the hybrid workplace model isn’t the only mountain to climb. Panelists expressed frustrations around educating employees about necessary process changes that must accompany the adoption of any new technology.

In their hurry to transform and ensure business continuity, organizations deployed technologies but didn’t leverage their full capabilities because they failed to adopt new processes, as well. “You don’t just pick the technology and that’s it,” said Dirk Propfe, president and CEO of ET Group. “Everything needs to change.” 

Fletcher Keister, executive vice president and chief transformation officer at Lumen Technologies, agrees.

“Say there’s an objective to move sales processes into a digital flow,” he said. “If there isn’t the same investment of energy into redefining the business process around digital marketing, you won’t extract the potential value from the technology. You have to care about all parts of the experience, not just the technology piece.” 

According to Propfe, employees often don’t even know what technologies and tools are available to them to facilitate the hybrid model. “Educating folks on the technologies that are already available in the stack and how those may be leveraged to support different types of business processes is essential,” he said. “About 70% of the technology that exists within an organization is not being used to its full potential.”

Finding Serendipitous Moments

Communication is also a big concern when transitioning to the hybrid model. Panelists cited a lack of understanding around how to coordinate and collaborate effectively, since the age-old ways of office life such as one-on-one ad hoc conversations by the water cooler are gone.

It’s true that when people work remotely, those serendipitous moments in which ideas are shared and problem solving accelerates are few and far between. Innovation happens in unplanned conversations and meetings, but in a hybrid world, almost everything must be planned.

“Moving to a hybrid work environment allows us to create moments that matter with colleagues, where we can collaborate on the spot or have an ad hoc conversation. It also allows us, through virtual meetings, to engage with a wider range of employees, and not just those we see physically in the office,” said Shankar Arumugavelu, senior vice president and global CIO at Verizon.